9:1 I speak the truth in Christ--I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit--

9:2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

9:3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race,

9:4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.

9:5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

9:6 It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.

9:7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned."

9:8 In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.

9:9 For this was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."

9:10 Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac.

9:11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad--in order that God's purpose in election might stand:

9:12 not by works but by him who calls--she was told, "The older will serve the younger."

9:13 Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."

9:14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!

9:15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

9:16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.

9:17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."

9:18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

9:19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"

9:20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

9:21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

9:22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?

9:23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory--

9:24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

9:25 As he says in Hosea: "I will call them 'my people' who are not my people; and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one,"

9:26 and, "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.'"

9:27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.

9:28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality."

9:29 It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah."

9:30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;

9:31 but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.

9:32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone."

9:33 As it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."